Walks and Edmund Hillary

I got up this morning before any of my bunk makes (I only had 3 thank goodness) and headed out the door to explore the Mount Cook area. I had one big problem to contend with though. My feet were really swollen and itched like crazy. Over the past few days I had been the lovely treat of the great sandfly! These little bastards had gotten me at least 22 times on my left foot and 10 or so on my right. I have the worst reaction to them, worse than friggan mosquitoes! These welts were at least 2 inches wide and red so you can imagine what my feet looked like. I could barely get my feet into my sneakers. I was thinking of wearing my flip flops but didn’t think they would be great to do the walks in, in case there was loose rock and the sort. So I wedged my poor swollen feet into my sneakers and started on my first walk which would take me to the Tasman Glacier. Unfortunately, this gem has been shrinking over the past few years so it isn’t as spectacular as I would of hoped for but it was still worth the walk. There were a few ice burgs floating around in the small lake of the glacier. They were white, light blue and grey/black. It was kind of cool to see them, not really what I was expecting to see, usually we just see white/blue ones on tv or in movies.

Tasman Glacier with Ice Flows

Tasman Glacier Ice 2

Tasman Glacier Ice 3

Tasman Glacier Ice 1

On my way back down to the carpark, I stopped at the blue lakes. Ok so they are called the blue lakes, but they are actually green. This is because the glacier has shrunk in size and is no longer feeding these lakes. The glacier water is clear and the sun hitting it makes it blue, so since there is no glacier water, the only water they get is from rain. This in turn makes them green because algae now grows in them. They were still pretty cool even though seeing them blue against the grey rocky background.

Blue Lake

Smaller Blue Lake

After these two relatively short walks, I was going to do try and do one more but my feet were just not up to it. So I got back into my car and slipped into flip flops which was such a relief. I then headed to the Edmund Hillary museum to find out a bit more about him. I am probably not going to do him must justice in my explanation of him but it has been a few days and I have a mind like a sieve and things are starting to mix together. He was the 1st person to reach the top of Mount Everest, and he did all of his training in New Zealand. He started with smaller mountains and finally conquered Mt Cook. After doing all of this, him and a Sherpa tackled Mt. Everest in I believe 1956 or some year around there (yes I know bad me). He has done so much for the hiking community around the world and even though he tried to stay out of the lime light, the media always made him out to be more than he wanted to. 50 years after his climb to the top of Mount Everest, they erected a statue of him at Mount Cook, where he is standing looking out over the mountain ranges. If you ever get the chance to read about him you should. I had never heard of him and reading the small details about his life just in the museum about him has intrigued me to learn more about him, which I will when I get home and get to a library. After spending an hour of so learning about Mr. Hillary I headed on my way to my next destination.

Sir Edmund Hillary and Mt Cook

Mount Cook and Lake

Mount Cook with Path

Mount Cook

Lake Tepako was where I had my next stop. It was a beautiful place with mountains surrounding it. I feel like a broken record because all of these places pretty much look the same. I found a little camping park where you could go for the day, so I headed down to it and got out and went and soaked my poor feet in the nice icy cold water. It wasn’t as cold as some other places, and I probably could of gone swimming if I was hot enough but just walking in the water was fine with me. I didn’t stay here too long as there wasn’t too much to do, and I wanted to see an old church in town called the Good Shepard. So I found this lovely old church that sits overlooking the lake that was made of all stone. It is a rather small church but I think that is one of the reasons I like it so much. I went in to check it out, and it didn’t burst into flames or anything so that was a good sign. ;) There was a picture window at the alter that looked out over the water. You can’t take pictures in the church and there was someone working there making sure of it, but I got a good shot of the outside looking in and you can see out the window. Since it was so small, there wasn’t much time spent here either so back on the road I went.

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Good Shepard Church from Side

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Good Shepard Church

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You might think that I spend a lot of time driving and it might be a waste. But this is my theory. I can go where ever I want, I am not tied to a tour service and where they want me to go. I can stop wherever or as often as I want to see what I want. I like tours don’t get me wrong, but this trip is all about me, myself and I and this is what I wanted to do. So speaking of stopping wherever I wanted to, on my way to wherever I was going next, I found a deer farm. I know it sounds odd but they have them around here. These deer were beautiful, the bucks were making sure that none of the does were in danger by me being there, so it was kind of sweet. The bucks all had huge antlers that were covered in fur which was really cool, I had only seen it one place before and that was in an animal sanctuary back in Invercargill I believe. So of course I snapped a bunch of pics and back on the road I went. At some point before I found a place to stay for the night, I found a pharmacy to figure out what I could take for my feet. The guy gave me cortazone creme and some anti-hystimine pills and let me tell you.....lord did they work wonders!